NPR Headlines

A new musical explores life in high school in a way that's eerily familiar. It's called Ranked, and it's set in a dystopian world where your class rank — determined by grades and test scores — governs everything from where you sit to what your future holds.

Updated Saturday 9:02 p.m. ET

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signaled his impatience with the United States, saying he was willing to hold a third summit with President Donald Trump, but only if the U.S. comes up with mutually agreeable terms for a deal by the end of this year.

Every state has a "right-to-farm" law on the books to protect farmers from being sued by their neighbors for the routine smells and noise created by farming operations. But this year, the agriculture industry has been pushing in several states to amend those laws so that they will effectively prevent neighbors from suing farms at all — even massive industrial livestock operations.

The woolly mammoth won't miss its tusk, but paleontologists and museum goers likely will.

On Thursday, a man was sentenced to federal prison after he and a co-conspirator stole – then segmented and sold – a fossilized mammoth tusk from a museum of the Bureau of Land Management in Anchorage, Alaska.

U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason sentenced 52 year-old Martin Elze to 33 months in federal prison, then three years of supervised release. Elze was also ordered to pay over $8,000 in restitution to the Campbell Creek Science Center.

Who would want to date someone named "Brooks Rattigan"?

It sounds like a jerk who makes furniture. It sounds like a corrupt law firm. It sounds like a preppy mobster. It sounds like an announcement of the two competitors who will face off in the final match of a wrestling tournament in a town whose population was built only by reproduction between and among people who rowed crew in college.

The City of Chicago on Thursday filed a civil complaint against actor Jussie Smollett trying to recoup the cost of his complaint to police that he'd been the subject of a racist and homophobic attack.

Updated at 9:40 a.m. ET Friday

For judges of the second annual Aspen Words Literary Prize, there was little question who ought to walk away with the award. In the end, in fact, the decision was unanimous: The panel picked An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., says the path to GOP success in 2020 is running "to be the firewall that saves the country from socialism."

McConnell told reporters Thursday that he is advising all Republican Senate candidates to run on offense by casting themselves as the only alternative to Democrats who want to drive the country to the left.

New Hampshire is poised to become the 21st state to abolish the death penalty.

The state Senate voted 17-6 Thursday to end capital punishment, adding its voice to the state House which voted for repeal last month by a vote of 279-88. The bill changes the penalty for capital murder to a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole.